


Five Things That Never Happened to Loren (and one that did)

by lit_luminary



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Developing Relationship, Drabble Collection, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 21:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10670988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit_luminary/pseuds/lit_luminary
Summary: Five moments from a life Loren almost lived, and one from a life she did.  (Set in the alternate timeline of "A Place to Stand" from Poetry's Dæmorphing series.)





	Five Things That Never Happened to Loren (and one that did)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Place to Stand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4550028) by [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry). 



1.

 

Six billion humans, six billion dæmons—just gone, incinerated so the Yeerks could never have them. How many plant and animal species? How many languages? How many works of art?

When Elfangor tells her—stalk eyes drooping, tail blade dragging on the ground—why he won’t be able to take her home, Loren clutches Jax so tightly her chest aches. She wishes she could hate the Andalite, could feel _anything_ smaller than the fact that she and Jax are the last one left to remember their destroyed world.

But she needs him to be her friend and not a monster.

 

2.

 

She goes to the Andalite homeworld with Elfangor. Even blasted with grief, part of her marvels at red-orange sky and graceful trees.

«This is Hala Fala,» Elfangor says, pressing his palm to the vine-wrapped trunk of a particular tree. «She is my Guide Tree.»

From his tone, she recognizes the importance. Jax steps between the tree’s roots on duiker hooves, noses at the bark low on its trunk, then looks sharply up at Elfangor. “She’s part of you?”

«Yes. Are—did Earth have such trees?»

“No,” Loren says. “But Jax touching her—it felt like he was touching another dæmon.”

 

3.

 

When Elfangor offers her the morphing technology, she doesn’t know whose pity he’d appealed to, what he’d argued. He looks hopeful, and she looks away, because the idea of being Andalite fills her with cold horror.

She’s the last, the very last human. If she gives that up…

_But if we don’t, how can we live here?_ Jax asks. _How long can you live on grass rations, Loren?_

She looks from him to Elfangor, then down at the human hand she presses against the cube, hard enough that it doesn’t shake. Tells herself that changing doesn’t have to mean permanently.

 

4.

The worst part of being in morph isn’t trading away her own body. It’s losing Jax’s presence beside her.

She’ll never be trapped accidentally, not when her Andalite form knows the time as deeply as the beat of its hearts. So she divides herself between the instinctive happiness of the morph and the steadying weight of Jax on her lap.

As the days pass, Elfangor tells her stories, explains his world. She wants to share Earth with him, but there’s so much no analogy will hold.

«Then show me.» 

He gives her the word _djafid_ and teaches her to sing.

 

5.

«Tobias,» she says.

«Tobias,» Elfangor agrees, hushed with awe. He twines his tail with hers, reaches with careful fingertips to caress Tobias’ tiny face. «Oh, Loren. He’s perfect.»

«He is,» Jax says. For one instant, they ache with the impossibility of a human infant, an unformed dæmon—but only an instant, because they’re too fiercely proud, too fully in love with their baby.

Loren counts fourteen delicate fingers, kisses his hands and his hooves, his eyestalks, his still-soft blade, and Elfangor sings love, hope, welcome.

This is her family, and in this moment, it’s worth everything she gave up.

 

(+1) 

They all reappear in the barn, the Time Matrix vanished and Tobias— _alive_ , whole, safe—in the rafters. Relief swells in her chest and throat, and she blinks back tears.

She and Ax fly to her house on either side of Tobias. They demorph, Tobias morphs human, and Elhariel flutters down to perch on Jax’s back.

Loren can feel her slight weight through Jax’s senses, but it’s not enough to bring her all the way out of the nightmare. She needs to hold her son.

She steps slowly toward him, opens her arms, and he lets her draw him in.


End file.
